Rules and Systems

Our goal here at Tharsult is to cater to Role Players and players who appreciate the Faerunian setting as it appears in the canon source books. I know this is a common claim by many servers, few if any will admit they are anything but a Role Play server and fewer still will admit their major deviations from canon lore. If claims of being a RP server were true you would see less powergaming and grinding and more actual RP in the NWN2 community. Our goal is to commit to the twin pillars of Role Play and Canon Lore. For reasons I will explain below we have come to some rather drastic changes to the way things are done on this server, but know that all these changes are done in the interest of encouraging Role Play over Powergaming or preserving the setting of Faerun.

Age Limit

The first and most obvious rule we need for a Role Play server is is to demand that all our players are at least eighteen years old, and legally able to deal with mature themes like violence war and torture as well as romantic love and lust. Servers that allow children to play in their games have to remove the possibility of sexual themes and once you do that you have shot Role Play in the foot. The desire to be wanted or needed by someone is such a driving force in so many of the characters of literature and real life that you are really encouraging flat characters and shallow RP to allow children at the cost of keeping your Role Play PG-13. Even some adults may not find this more mature style of RP to their tastes. If you would be uncomfortable with the nudity or violence found in an episode of 'Game of Thrones' then you will not likely be comfortable on this server or playing in our DM events.

Experience

The most important change we have made is the total removal of experience points. That is right, there is no XP at all on Tharsult. Going up in level seems like the most essential element of DnD, right? Wrong. The most essential element of DnD is Role Play. It is a Role Playing game, and all things even Experience Points are secondary to the Role Play. If we are really here for the Role Play we can do so at any level, and the powers and points your character has are only side details. But yet most Role Play servers are full of people rushing out to level up when they could be Role Playing. That is power gaming, not Role Playing.

The big problem with XP is that even a bare little trickle of it is enough to propel your players to epic levels given enough time. As long as you have a system for the character to climb up, even somewhat decent Role Players are going to fall in to the habit of grinding and makes excuses to adventure. Even if you make the grind upward in level take a long time, all this does is make the player grind longer and harder to get the power they think they must have just to get by or measure up to the other players.

Another aspect of the problem of XP is the scale of the setting of Faerun. The world of Faerun is ruled by people far below epic levels, in fact most servers are full of characters who easily outclass the worlds biggest baddest NPCs so much so that it becomes laughable that they have not conquered the world for themselves. When you have more levels than the greatest wizard in all of Thay, or more might than all the lords of Waterdeep on your character sheet you have stopped playing in Faerun and started playing in an episode of DragonballZ.

If we are committed to preserving the setting of Toril and we are committed to catering to Role Players and not Powergamers we have to curb the habit of grinding... and to not have an island full of demi gods who should be ruling the world rather than adventuring for a living, the only way to do that is to take experience points out of the setting entirely.

Experience points really only work in a table top game where the DM can control the characters leveling, and can give the players a worldwide scope for their game once they outgrow saving villages from trolls and start to get epic levels.

What reason would adventurers have to adventure other than getting more powerful, once XP is taken away? The answer to that is their only motives now are IC motives. Money? Plenty of that to be found adventuring on Tharsult, and gear to spend that money on as well. More altruistic characters may want to adventure to make the civilized world more safe, and this is still something they can do... but they will only be doing so for IC motivation as the OOC motive of collecting XP has been removed from the equation.

You may ask since there is no XP is everyone stuck at level one? No, but you can find the details on that in our character generation page.

Role Play

While it may seem redundant to say that we expect you to RP here on our RP server there are things that do need to be said. First you must stay in character and not resort to OOC chatter. When you must say something OOC put it in parentheses and keep it short. Something like...

((AFK a minute

Or...

((BRB

Those are acceptable uses of OOC talk, but do not use it as a way to say goodbye to the other players or ask rules questions. Rules questions can be handled via PM with a DM or another player and saying goodbye can best be done in character.

We also expect you to play your alignment. If you have some specific questions then you may contact me in a PM in the forums but I do expect all of my players to know good guys do not abuse the innocent or participate in slavery.

We expect you to know the setting. You do not have to be a lore master, but you should know at least a little bit about your characters homeland and your story. There is no excuse for getting in game and having to tell someone OOC that you can not answer their questions because you did not think of your backstory yet. If you are here to Role Play, doing so to any decent level of quality will require you to have a story before you log in. So take a minute and make up your character background before you log in with a new character.

ERP

The focus of Tharsult is not ERP, but it is welcome and even encouraged. The desire for love or lust make up at least part of almost every character that fills both the real world and our fantasy game. Some would go as far as saying most characters when devoid of some motive for one of those two things is a flat character, and I would agree with them.

ERP is however just an aspect of RP, and the desire to have cyber sex should not be allowed to eclipse the character you have created. What this means is you need to know the setting enough to know your Paladin of Sune may indeed have a liberal and open minded view of sexuality... but she should not be cuddling up to demon worshipping drow or buying a harem of slaves. In short, if the ERP does not fit your RP you should not be doing it.

You must also take in to account a level of realism when choosing where and when to engage in ERP as well. Doing so in a public place will not get a pleasant response from the locals, and public nudity is frowned on in most places. There are hotel rooms, the option for private player housing and even a whole temple to Sharess where such things are welcomed. So again, ERP is welcome but keep it IC

CvC and Character Death

For most of your time playing on Tharsult you will be able to respawn your character should they be defeated in combat and are slain. You may Role Play this as a near death experience or just a good old fashioned beat down or even an actual character death and IC raise at one of the temples in the city.

A character can only be killed permanently in one of four ways, all of them to some extent voluntary.

1- Hardcore Game Night. I am going to try to plan one of these every few months. Hardcore Game night will always be a game set off the island going to some exotic and far off land on a high risk and high reward adventure. The adventures will be premade by me but I will not be logged in advancing my story. Instead the players involved will be going on an old fashioned dungeon crawl for gold and loot. Characters that are slain on the adventure will not be able to respawn and return to game, but there will be the chance to find unique items that go well past what is sold in the stores even in Tharsult. Characters who survive these voluntary quests will return to the islands with their loot and be able to respawn once again. These adventures will be voluntary, and separate from my normal game nights so no one needs to feel kept out of the storylines on the server for fear of permadeath for their characters

2- A CvC duel. Most CvC is not permanent. If you get mad at someone on the beach and haul off and attack them, they can respawn just like they had been slain by monsters. This is how most CvC will be, but some rivalries go on so long and create such bitter enemies that both sides want a chance to be rid of the other. When this happens and the two characters consent to a public honor duel, they both post in the IC forums announcing their intent to fight. We will do our best to make an event of it, and draw players to see the duel. In general some reward will be given to the winner and the loser will need to make a new character. Again this is only voluntary, any CvC outside of a public duel can result in a respawn

3- Being a hunted criminal. If you commit high crimes against Tharult or its Sultan, or if you commit enough low crimes to prompt one of the pashas of Tharsult to declare you a wanted criminal then a bounty is put on the characters head and that character may not respawn if they are slain before clearing their name. The characters hunting a wanted criminal may still respawn normally if beaten by the hunted character. This also is voluntary, if you avoid crimes against the kingdom and nobles that rule it you will not have to face this consequence.

4-Being a slave. A slave character may be permanently slain by their owner. This does require the owner to write to me and explain the circumstances, hopefully I will already know if something this drastic comes up but notifying me of it via our forums is a necessary part of this process and I will expect it to not be done lightly. Again this is voluntary in that no one is forced to make a slave character, if this is too much for you simply make your characters free people and Role Play them as submissive as you like. We do however ask our players who make slaves to remember this rule, and let it flavor your Role Play as your owner has a sword hanging over your characters head.

Names

This is another thing I would have hoped did not need to be said, but apparently leaving it unsaid has poor results. So here it goes...

Your character should have a unique name. You are not allowed to plagiarize the names of gods from our real world, nor mythology or legends from our real world. No one playing here should show such weak Role Play skills they need to name their characters Beowulf or Persephone or Jesus Christ. You are also not allowed to steal your name from works of fiction... this means it is poor RP to name your character Jon Snow or Elric or Gandalf.

This includes joke names like 'Justin Case' or 'Chris Shendo'

Lets also try to avoid names that belong in comic books written by five year olds. We do not need any characters named 'Death Raven Bloodstorm' or 'DeathBlood Ravenstorm', please. In fact if your character name includes the words Blood or Death or Storm at all just log out for a half hour or so and try to think of a decent name before you come back. This is a Role Play server and those names should really be kept on Action servers